News
by LuteofLorien
Summary: Fierce battles took place across Middle Earth in the last days of the War of the Ring- and messengers can only cover so many miles in a day. What would it be like to ponder the fate of your homeland before those crucial tidings arrive? In Ithilien after the destruction of the Ring, Legolas and Gimli await news of their homes and loved ones. One-shot from Aragorn's POV.


**_A/N: Thanks to guest reviewer SortingHat for pointing out a misleading and irrelevant statement in my original summary, which I have since corrected. I would love to get some reviews on the actual content of this story as well though. Updated it slightly to make some of the sentences less clunky, but on the whole it's pretty much the same._**

 **Disclaimer: These characters belong to J.R.R. Tolkien. I'm just playing with them. Honest.**

News

Every day they ask me for news, and I have none to give them.

Part of me is disappointed that they feel the need to do this. That they don't trust me to pass on any tidings the instant I receive them. As if they think I don't know how much this means to them.

But I chide myself for feeling hurt by this. Because were I in their position, however much I trusted my friends, I know that I would do the same.

It has become a ritual now. Every evening they come, and they always come together. I wonder how this has come about, whether they discussed this. Has it been done deliberately to ensure that one of them should not be left to face grievous tidings without the immediate presence of the other? Somehow, I doubt that this was the case. Like so much between them, I suspect that this was an unspoken agreement. They do not have to arrange to be there for each other. They know that without having to organise it. There is constant jesting and verbal sparring between them, and they exchange retorts that would make them seem bitter enemies to one unused to their ways. But the things that really matter, they don't say. Because they don't need to.

And so they come to my tent. Sometimes they have other business of import, sometimes another matter which is no more than a pretext, and occasionally just a few pleasantries. But they always have the question.

And the question inevitably comes. Although, if there is other business to discuss, they always raise that first. This frustrates me too, that they try to pretend their question is no more than an afterthought, that they give me this transparent show of strength, that they try to hide how much they care. I want to show them both that I see how they suffer and it pains me too that I have nothing to give them. I want to stand beside them in this.

Even so, I dread the moment when I have to answer the question. To my shame, often I cannot meet their eyes when I do it. I cannot face their disappointment. It shows in their expressions, they cannot conceal it, and it is not lessened by the fact that they know as well as I do what is coming. I shuffle my papers, adjust my robes, pour them a drink so I don't have to look at them as I say the words that have become part of our daily liturgy.

 _No tidings yet from Erebor. None from the Woodland Realm._

The first few times, this was followed by a request for me to pass on any tidings that came immediately. I reassured them, trying to hide my hurt that they even needed to ask, that the moment a messenger was sighted they would be made aware. Then they stopped saying that, because we all know. We all know that if tidings come during the day, they will be sent for. And if they have not been summoned during the day, there will be no tidings for them in the evening.

And yet, every evening, they still come.

I do not begrudge it to them. It is their own small way of marking their investment in their beleaguered homelands, even all these leagues away, their way of making it known that even though they could not fight in both places, they remember. They sense, as I do, that any events there will have happened already. It is a disconcerting thought, that perhaps, a treasured kinsman or friend who yet lives to your knowledge is being mourned miles away, and that your grief will still be raw whilst others are moving on. You will be a latecomer to the sorrow, and you will miss your chance to say goodbye, your chance to mourn with the community knitting itself back together after the loss.

In this respect it is easier for Legolas. His elven bonds to his kin and very close friends ensure that he knows at least that they have survived and are not gravely injured. I wonder if Gimli resents this. If he does, he does not let it show. I rather think he does not. He is not quick to envy: a necessary trait when befriending an excessively strong and agile immortal being. Still, no-one could blame him if he did harbour a little jealousy that Legolas has this assurance of the safety of his loved ones. Gimli has no idea whether his mother and father yet live. He hides behind his gruff jests, claiming that his father is too stubborn to leave Erebor now, that he fully expects to return to a cuff round the ear and a scolding for sauntering off and taking it easy over the past months.

This is the only way he communicates that he is terribly, stomach-churningly afraid, and especially for his father.

But Legolas and I both understand.

Legolas speaks little of what he senses in the hearts of his family. His bond is not telepathy, exactly, and cannot be used for deliberate communication. It allows those bonded to sense a little of the other's emotional experiences, but not what has caused them. Legolas only says that he senses joy mingled with weariness and grief in the hearts of those close to him, and that he does not wish to guess at what it could mean. I do not blame him. But I suspect that even if he does not wish to, he cannot help himself searching for meanings in these impressions. Nay, I do not suspect, I know, because I know him, that hours of sleepless speculation lie behind his casual dismissal of potential information. He will have pondered the possibilities, wondering if their joy means that 'Mirkwood' is finally free from darkness, wondering if it now bears a new name, wondering if this means that there was victory. Wondering at what cost that victory was bought, having felt their grief. Wondering whether the weariness stems from a long and hard-fought battle or from fading spirits too jaded now after centuries of resistance to rejoice at the final lifting of the darkness. He has been through all this over and over again, hoping and then chiding himself for daring to hope. And yet he will not admit to doing this, will not admit that his heart incessantly pores over the scant information he has, despite his rational mind's insistence that he cannot know until the messenger comes.

Perhaps Gimli is right not to resent him his connection to his kin. Such a tantalising half-knowledge could drive one wild. But Legolas scrutinises everything he senses in silence, does not speak of his wild hopes and desperate fears, and waits with Gimli, and comes to my tent every evening for news that isn't there.

Aside from these visits to my tent, they give no sign of their hunger for information. They certainly do not brood. Or, perhaps, they do show their anxiety, but in a manner only those closest to them can recognise. They throw themselves into the life of this hurriedly constructed army camp. They build shelters, carry supplies, run messages. Legolas scouts the surrounding areas so thoroughly and so often that by now he must know every leaf and twig. He disappears hunting for the best part of a day, travelling far into the forest so as not to deplete the resources of the area around our camp. Gimli chops firewood relentlessly, so much that I think we will not use it all in the weeks before we relocate to Minas Tirith. He is always constructing things: better pallets so our wounded can be higher up and away from the chill of the ground, long tables for the feast when our valiant Ringbearers awake, pulleys to help unload the supply ships which are starting to arrive from Minas Tirith. Stone is his forte of course, but there is little need for permanent structures in a situation such as ours, so he makes do with wood. He grumbles about this, Legolas teases him, and thus they entertain each other and anyone else who happens to overhear them trying to settle their eternal quarrel over the merits of stone compared to those of wood. They have jointly shouldered the daunting task of entertaining Pippin, who grows increasingly bored with the healers and has tried every method of persuasion known to Hobbit to convince me to let him out of bed. He has nearly worn me down, but I cannot allow him to do that just yet: he cannot put weight on his broken leg, and I will not have him supporting himself entirely on his other leg, since the ankle was badly sprained. Legolas and Gimli do their best, visiting him sometimes separately, sometimes together, spending so much time patiently explaining the customs of Elves and Dwarves respectively that I am amazed all over again at his infinite supply of questions. Gimli teaches him some Dwarven drinking songs which cannot be at all decent given the way I have heard them laughing and smuggles him pipeweed which he thinks I don't know about. Legolas is particularly good when Pippin is uncomfortable, singing to him in Sindarin, telling him stories to distract him from the pain, and gently stroking his head in soothing circles. At first I was surprised that Pippin allowed him to do this, since he protests so often about being coddled. But the spirit in which Legolas offers this comfort is anything but patronising, and Pippin accepts it gratefully, knowing that Legolas respects him now as fellow warrior as well as loving him as a friend. Between them, Legolas and Gimli are making his recovery bearable for him, and I am grateful to them. I am grateful to them for everything. They seem to be omnipresent, keeping the business of camp running, turning up at opportune moments to provide a helpful suggestion or an extra pair of hands. I'm not sure when they sleep.

Perhaps they don't.

I know their devotion to duty, to their comrades and to me. I still cannot quite comprehend that last. I know that whatever the situation of their homelands, they would work hard and do their best, because that is who they are and what they do. But I have an inkling that perhaps something other than duty is feeding the frenzy and fervour with which they work. They fill their lives so completely with the matters of here so their minds cannot wander there, there where a battle has almost certainly been fought, there where lives have been lost, there back home where their kin may be suffering and still they do not know. They give themselves so much to think about and do, arming themselves to fight when they are assailed in their own minds by questions they cannot answer.

And they almost succeed in quashing their rebellious thoughts, and in earning the admiration of most of the camp along the way.

But the seething worries in their minds demand one concession so that this uneasy truce may exist.

So every day they ask me for news.

And I still have none to give them.


End file.
